Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon

I recently finished reading The Maltese Falcon, having decided to go back and read some of the classics of the mystery and detective genre. I like the sparse, clean prose. In some ways, Hammett reads like Hemingway. Someone suggested the 1941 John Huston film production starring Bogie, Peter Lorie, and Sydney Greenstreet simply changed the margins in the novel to create the screenplay. An exaggeration certainly, but they do seem to track quite closely. One can't help imagining Bogie and the others as one reads it. Now I have to go back and watch the flick. Entertaining reading. An American classic.